Time for another installment of Income & Expenses. This section, ironically enough, is where I break down my income and list my expenses for each month along with a short analysis of how I think I can improve on them in the future.
Income: $18,543 From me: 15,985
From Spouse: 2,558
It was a good month compared to last month's annoying upswing followed by a horrendous breakeven finish. I managed to get in 150 hours, which I am fairly happy with. I've started to track my arrival and departure time from the casino to keep any non-playing time (waiting for a seat, walking from the car to the poker room) from affecting the amount of time that I am actually playing. And with those numbers factored in, I actually spent 159 hours at the casino. That is right on target with my goal of 40 hours of work per week. A little accounting gymnastics never hurt anyone right? It seems like I spend an average of 25min of "buffer time" each session away from the table before and after I actually sit down in a game. I'll continue to monitor this number going forward to see if that average holds true.
Hours of cash Played: 150 hours over 21 sessions
MTTs played: 0
Hourly Rate: 106.57
Expenses $4,689
[i]Home- 597
This is where most of the savings came from for this month. We refinanced our mortgage, and as a result we automatically skip this month's payment. We paid $337 to the title company for the refinance, and the rest went to HOA fees and getting some oil stains removed from our driveway to comply with some annoying HOA regulations. This number will be back in the normal range next month
Auto & Transport- 1,300
600 to car payments
152 to insurance
265 to gas
283 to registration renewal
Health and Fitness- 502
Insurance- 418 -This will go down to 189 next month as my wife now has benefits
Gym- 34 -Still trying to cancel this. Been a hassle so far.
Co-Pays -50
Food & Dining- 1,091
$33 Farmer's Market
$26 Olive Garden
$26 Firehouse subs
$75 Wal Mart groceries
$19 Marco's Pizza
$45 Home Plate Grill
$4 Starbucks
$370 Wal Mart
$88 Albertson's
$57.50 Asian Online Groceries
$20 McDonald's
$328 Meat Truck
This number would actually be in a more acceptable range of $700 if we didn't purchase $328 in beef/chicken off of a meat truck this month. Hopefully the purchase shows in next month's food bill being lowered as a result. We also could probably try to not eat out as much...
Bills & Utilities- 408
24 Water
114 Cable
8 Netflix
92 Gas
166 Mobile Phone
At first glance it looks like a victory because the number is half of last month's number. However, on further inspection you'll notice that there is no electricity bill this month. I believe I will be paying that at the beginning of October so next month's bill will likely be higher. Still planning to cancel the cable...
We bought $200 worth of winter/spring clothes for the little one, plus a $97 bike trailer off of craigslist, along with some other biking gear. It has gotten a decent workout so far as I've taken her via bike to the park 6 times this month. Pretty happy about getting a 6 mile round-trip bike ride in twice a week or so as I've lost about 10 lbs this month; down to 195 from 205. Bike maintenence is also typically pretty low, so future costs for the bikes shouldn't be too much.
Business Expenses- 4
Only Valet parked once this month and I added all of my other casino tips into the income from playing already.
Entertainment- 40
We went to go see Finding Nemo 3D as a family and, although it was fairly expensive, it was a fun movie and our two year old watched and enjoyed the whole thing. It went a lot better than expected.
Other- 260
It was our 5th wedding anniversary this month so we each gave each other gifts. I got a "Beer of the Month" membership for 6 months and she got a replacement chain for a necklace I gave her on our honeymoon that she thought was lost.
That's everything. If we hadn't gotten a pass on the mortgage payment for this month, our expenses would have been ~$6,500, which is below the $6,800 average that we have been spending this year. After adding this month up on the scoreboard, it has brought the average monthly spending down to $6,628 for the year. Not amazing, but with a little focus and determination, and the help of some nice weather to keep the energy bill down, October should be a very mild month expense-wise.
With an income of $18,543 and expenses of $4,689, we had a savings rate this month of 74%
That brings our savings rate for the year to an average of 36.71%, a far cry from my original goal of 65%. If we can get the number up over 40% for the year then I'll be happy with it at this point.
Here's to another strong month! Looking forward to powering through the end of the year.
Its been a while since I posted my last blog entry and so have to apologise for that. Been busy grinding the NL50 levels on Stars and I seem to have found my optimal earning level. I can only describe my game as "automated" for want of a better description.
Many people would say "ABC" but that is just another way to say the same thing. Over the years I have practiced my ABC to should a level that it is almost as automatic as basic strategy in blackjack. I know that I will never be a mid-stakes player playing this way but I am doing well at my level and multi-tabling isn't harming me because I am not watching the players closely enough.
I use a HUD but only in a basic way and look at VPIP, PFR and 3/bet stats which are crucial around the blinds. But also in full ring then the tendency is for players to be more risk averse. I went through a bad run of results in the summer where my earn rate dropped over a 100k period. Luckily someone who I trust analysed my game and I was opening my ranges too much.
I just don't think that full ring allows you to do that but back on track now. I am also playing at better times of the day as well on www.pokerstars.co.uk while before I was playing in the day so that I had more of a social life......the choice had to be made.....either man up and play in the evenings and around midnight or pack it in.
FSDFDA FUCK HAIRLINESDFASDSGby bigredhoss, September 28
just confirmed my suspicion that i am starting to go bald, hairline in front is receding into a horseshoe kind of thing and there's a small spot on top that's probably not noticeable to others yet but it's there, and now realizing it is generally thinning everywhere IM 25 YEARS OLD NOT 55 I AM SORRY IF I SLOWROLLED SOMEONE IN A PAST LIFE FOR THIS KARMA ITUTGYGUYVGHKL;IY FUCK FUCK FUCK CONFIRMED SUICIDE WATCH
Been working on my game pretty hard the last few months and finally made myself play some higher stakes. It's nice to get some positive reinforcement for the hard work I've been putting in. Onwards and upwards!?
New Car... Need help choosingby Svenman87, September 27
Have a 45~50k budget
Looking for a sporty car that I can drive in the spring, summer, and fall... I'll keep my current car for winter driving and see how it goes. Something I can say 30 years from now, "Back in the day I had a ________. Man what I wouldn't do for those wheels back." or something else silly along those lines
Other cars I'm looking at
-BMW 1 & 3 Series
-Porsche Boxster & Cayman (just a bit out of my original price range but can stretch)
I've been reading a ton of reviews and gone on a few test drives, and $ for $ I am really liking the 370Z but I'd appreciate any input on all the cars listed, as well as others you think I should look at.
pretty solid month, i got rid of the deep games and started playing zoom. Took some 5/10 shots as well, but that didn't go too well. so i just went back to zoom nl500 and enjoyed not having to table select. next month i will have close to zero hands played as i'm going to Nepal and doing some trekking up the mountains.
I'm raising money for Starlight by taking part in 2012 Royal Parks Foundation Half Marathon. Please sponsor me at http://www.virginmoneygiving.com/faz
I am trying to reach at least £500 and hopefully close to £1000. Only 11 days to go!!
Please help... the money will go to granting once in a lifetime wishes to children who are seriously or terminally ill.
You ever really vibin' w/ some cat and havin a good time? You wanna end the interaction w/ a nice "Hey man, I really enjoyed lunch. I'm really diggin your style. We should do this again some time. Until we meet again" and win the day w/ mutually exceptional hand shake?
Then he is sitting down or something and has to reach back kind of uncomfortably and the handshake is a little strange but you get it somewhat right but somewhat wrong but you are like oh shit man we fucked up the storybook ending handshake but I hope it's ok? Hopefully, we take care of business next time?
Good Sex and Transcendence:
Would I be writing this blog post or giving 2 shits about the above if I was breast fuckin some Kate Upton lookalike with moxy to match the mams? Tenacity to match the tits? Pizazz to match the premium pair?
So anywhooooooo I got a job again. At the same company! But Im gettin a raise not too big
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btw for those who dont know i havnt been working sine november 2011, 6 months ive been away in asia travelling, phils etc. Been back 3 months in sydney and finally able to get a job..... back at my old company- its a railway company(hence the title of this blog). But now its a better job, different project- i will be site engineer instead of office which was super boring. Lets hope this site works is fun. And also its signalling, which will pay heaaaaaaps once ive got few years experience.
The main thing is that its close to my house and only takes like 20 min drive to get there against the traffic. Not like 1 hr travels before which fucking drained me.
I feel I should preface this with: "Nerding before birding"
So, after quitting poker (again) I'm looking to learn new skills in computer programming and language, and to support that I'm doing alot of study about memory, and memory techniques.
Flashcard software is allowing me to learn subjects really quickly, and retain the knowledge, and I want to talk about it.
Check it out:
The forgetting curve http://www.mediafire.com/conv/c77202d...885947495286bfc45c24c88751094ce6g.jpg
We learn a new fact like "in mountaineering, the death zone refers to altitudes above 8000m" or "Japanese for vending machine is 'jidou han baishi'" Recall of a fact drops off sharply without repetition. So we make a flashcard for it, and repeat the exposure, then after the second viewing, recall drops off more slowly. and so on.
This pattern in human forgetting leads to the idea repeating the flashcard at just the right time. Too soon, and you have wasted a few valuable seconds on something you already recall, too late, and the memory pathway has eroded and it won't stick.
You might have heard that the best way to study your notes from a class is 2 hours after class, then 2 days after, then a week after that etc. This is how to get the material lodged in long term memory. doing a ton of repetitions at first learning won't make it stick in long term memory any better. Our minds need the space of time in between.
So this software called supermemo, basically keeps track of that time-spacing for each flashcard, and every evening I spend ~20minutes running through the repetitions it throws up. The flashcard question appears, I try to recall the answer as best I can, then I push 'show answer' and rate how easy it was to recall, from a rating of: bright, good, pass, fail, bad or null. This tells the program when to ask me about that flashcard again. It's actually quite entertaining to run through the days repetitions, because everything it throws up is just on the edge of recall, so its challenging. And if you are learning multiple subjects, you get alot of variation in questions. By letting the program manage what I cram, I gain alot of time to read new topics, adding key points to my supermemo library as new flashcards.
So basically this is super useful for learning anything, I'm currently using it to learn Japanese, SQL programming, Perl Programming, the mnemonic major system (might make another post about this) and some nice arguments I want to be able to remember from 'Fooled by Randomness'
Anyway, this is running a bit long, so let me end with a delicious quote from this article:
"The problem of forgetting might not torment us so much if we could only convince ourselves that remembering isn't important. Perhaps the things we learn — words, dates, formulas, historical and biographical details — don't really matter. Facts can be looked up. That's what the Internet is for. When it comes to learning, what really matters is how things fit together. We master the stories, the schemas, the frameworks, the paradigms.
The disadvantage of this comforting notion is that it's false. "The people who criticize memorization — how happy would they be to spell out every letter of every word they read?" asks Robert Bjork, chair of UCLA's psychology department and one of the most eminent memory researchers. After all, Bjork notes, children learn to read whole words through intense practice, and every time we enter a new field we become children again. "You can't escape memorization," he says. "There is an initial process of learning the names of things. That's a stage we all go through. It's all the more important to go through it rapidly." "
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